


When You're Stuck But You're Not Alone

by mielipieli



Series: The Titans never really stopped being teens within [8]
Category: Titans (Comics)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, donna and dick being bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 04:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17196704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mielipieli/pseuds/mielipieli
Summary: When the cave system they were exploring collapses, Donna and Dick get stuck in a tunnel. But it's not so bad: They have each other's company.





	When You're Stuck But You're Not Alone

“Are you getting anything?”, Donna asks after five minutes of Dick and her walking through the cave in a comfortable silence. 

  


He’s staring at a scanner and cross referencing the data with something on his holo computer the entire time: “Nothing out of the ordinary.” He stops in place. “Wait a second.”

  


Donna stops as well and looks around. If Dick needs a second pair of eyes, he’ll ask and just staring over his shoulder won’t help. The cave tunnel they’re currently in is quite large. It’s radius is at least four meters. Donna doesn’t really like the way this tunnel was constructed, though. It’s manmade and some of the stones don’t look too stable. The other parts of the cave - and the part Roy, Wally and Garth went into - seemed much better. 

  


There’s a loud bang and Donna only sees the stones moving early enough because she was already looking at them. She grabs a hold of Dick’s arm and pulls him with her away from the falling stones. When she thinks they should be far enough, she sets him down and braces her body above him in case she’s wrong. She can take a rock falling on her, he might not. 

  


Donna tunes out of the here and now for a second. She’s just trying to figure out whether they’re safe. After fifteen more seconds she’s pretty sure of it. Dick is still breathing through the shock. Donna pushes herself up to give him some space. He passes a visual inspection. No blood running out of him as far as she can tell and there’s no reason for it to be doing that either. 

  


“Are you okay?”, Donna asks after another five seconds, in which his breathing has largely normalized.

  


Dick nods: “Yeah. That was close as fuck.” He pushes himself up and his face turns into a mask of pain for a moment.

  


“What hurts?” It’s the voice Donna uses when talking to children and it’s not even entirely on purpose that she’s using it now.

  


“I think I dislocated my shoulder”, he says not quite looking at Donna.

  


She lets the information run through her head for a moment - not that she really needs to. It’s a pretty easy equation to solve. Flying away from collapsing tunnel + grabbing just one arm + flying really fast = dislocated shoulder. Usually Donna has a better handle on how fast to fly but usually Donna isn’t sure Dick’s going to die from collapsing tunnel. 

  


“I’m sorry”, she says. “Let me take a look at it.”

  


Before she can help him start pulling his costume from his arm, both of their communicators register incoming calls. Donna quickly answers hers.

  


“We heard some rumbling from your location so I ran back and the tunnel is completely closed off are you guys ok?”, Wally rambles at her before she can say a single word.

  


“We’re in a stable part of the tunnel further back.” That’s the most important bit of information and it needs to arrive at Wally’s brain before she gives him more. 

  


“Is there another way out did you guys get hurt are you…”, Wally goes on and obviously Donna hasn’t achieved her goal.

  


“Wally just chill out, okay? Let your brain catch up with your mouth.”

  


Wally actually stops at that: “Okay”, he says carefully.

  


“You know we scanned the cave system and there was only one entrance.” Wally hums in agreement. “So, we’re stuck in here until the collapsed part is cleared.” No sound this time but that’s not really a bad sign. “Dick and I are going to stay in the more stable part, which is right here. Neither of us is hurt...” It’s a lie but they don’t need the others to worry because of a dislocated shoulder. “...and we have no other problems right now. Open the entrance to this tunnel in the best way possible. We’ll be fine until then.”

  


“I’ll let you know of any progress”, Wally says much more calmly. 

  


“Thank you.”

  


Dick has that dumb grin of his face that he always gets when she’s being a hypocrite. 

  


Donna rolls her eyes: “Fuck you. There’s no need to worry them because of a dislocated shoulder.” She carefully takes his arm out of the costume and turns it over to see whether there’s any more damage she might have done. 

  


“There really isn’t, is there?” He winces a bit at the end when Donna presses on the part she held onto earlier but there’s no big flinch so at least it shouldn’t be broken.

  


She pushes his shoulder back into position without any warning but Dick knows what it feels like to get his shoulder popped in, so he knows what’s coming anyway. He grunts as the pain hits him. 

  


She gets him to nap with the promise of waking him in half an hour and only after he’d taken some Ibuprofen. Donnas leaning against the wall with Dicks head on her lap. He’s curled up under a thermal blanket because the cave is cold and they don’t know how long they’ll be stuck here.

  


When her communicator rings his sleep is deep enough that it doesn’t wake him.

  


“Hey, Roy”, she whispers.

  


“Why are we whispering?”, Roy stage-whispers back.

  


“Dick’s napping.”

  


Roy’s voice returns to a normal sound: “Oh, good job.” He quiets down for a moment and Donna can hear murmuring. “Wally wants to know if Dick is injured.”

  


“He’s fine. I got him out of the way of all debris”, it’s not a lie technically. Just omitting the truth. And Wally will already be impatient enough without knowing Dick has an injury. And there’s nothing that needs to be prepared for treating a dislocated shoulder before hand. No emergency transport. It just won’t help. 

  


“She says he’s fine” Roy tells Wally. “No, Wally, fine usually means uninjured. Shut up.”

  


When the other side is quiet again, Donna asks: “What’s the plan?”

  


“We contacted the Watchtower. They’ll try to get us a Lantern and a Super. Clark and Kara are on planet as are Kyle, John and Jessica. We’re currently waiting for the call of who’s available and how soon.” 

  


“Okay.”

  


Roy is silent for a moment and Donna hears him quickly go somewhere: “What did Dick injure?”

  


Of course. Roy  _ has  _ noticed her slight hesitation: “It’s just a dislocated shoulder. But Wally…”

  


“Yeah”, he interrupts Donna and their understanding hangs in the line. “I know.”

  


* * *

 

She really does wake Dick up after twenty minutes like she’s promised him. He doesn’t wake up all at once and instead cuddles further into her and smiles at her: “Any new information?”

  


“Jess and Kara are working on it”, she’s talked to Roy basically the entire time and got all the information right when stuff happened. 

  


Dick hums happily.

  


“It’s still going to take a while, though. They need to make sure everything above the cave doesn’t collapse inside and apparently it’s tricky. They’ve even requested more help.”

  


Dick’s face falls and he lets out a small groan: “And here I thought I wouldn’t have to freeze my ass off.”

  


Donna raises her eyebrows: “Are you cold?” Because it’s cold in here but not cold enough for him to be cold inside the blanket. That might mean a problem for them. 

  


“No, but now I’m not leaving my burrito anytime soon.”

  


Donna combs her hand through his hair for a moment before asking: “How has life been treating you?”

  


“Good. I’ve been pretty busy lately”, he sighed. “I want to see Wally more often but Bruce… Well, Bruce was on jury duty and Bruce needed me and then Wally was busy in Central and there’s just always one crisis after the other.”

  


Donna hummed. She knew the feeling. “But neither of you resents the other one for it.”

  


“I resent myself for it.”

  


She knows Dick doesn’t mean it but he says it in that tone that he always uses when he’s being too hard on himself and she needs to stop this train of thought here.

  


“Hey”, she says and Dick looks in her face instead to the ceiling. “You know that Wally loves how much your family means to you. You know how much Wally’s family means to him. What do you think he’d say if you blew off Bruce when he needed you just to spend time with Wally?”

  


“Dude”, Dick says in Wally’s exact tone. “It’s fine. Just go.”

  


Donna lets her head fall against the cave wall and laughs: “Yeah. He wouldn’t accept it for a second. People in need are always going to take priority in your relationship. But that’s the same for both of you. It’s why you work.”   
  


They spend the next ten minutes in silence. Donna’s thinking about how much she missed their team when she didn’t even know that it was what she was missing. Somehow, locked in a cave she felt more save and happy than she had before they had found each other again.

  


“How’s it been with Roy and you?”, Dick finally asks.

  


Donna blushes: “Dancing around each other.”

  


“Girl, you’ve been on an official date!”, Dick screams outraged. 

  


“I know, I know”, she says and sighs. “He’s been very… Roy? I gotta figure some shit out and I think he knows that. He’s been giving me a lot of space.”

  


Dick doesn’t say anything in reply but Donna can feel him nod. There’s something extremely comfortable about all of this. She’s always comfortable around Dick but usually one of them is in a hurry or something is happening. It’s kind of nice to not have to do anything even if it is because they’re stuck in a collapsed cave.

  


“I saw that Diana was on a mission with Artemis and Aztek last week.” Dick’s tone is carefully neutral. 

  


Donna groans at the mention. She wasn’t asked to join that team up. Which, yeah, Kind of annoying. She hasn’t actually spent time with Diana in the last year, either. Even when she was stuck on the Watchtower. 

  


Dick laughs: “You don’t want to talk about it?” 

  


“Yep.” 

  


* * *

 

“And then Tim just punched him in his face!”, Dick recounts excitedly.

  


Donna laughs. 

  


“The only board meeting I’ve ever actually enjoyed.”

  


Dicks comm beeps: “Hi, Wally.” He puts it on speaker.

  


“Hey”, Donna greets him.

  


“Hi. Kyle just got here. We’re finally actually making progress. Well, they’re making progress. You’ll probably be out within half an hour.”

  


“That’s good”, Dick says and he actually sounds like he doesn’t care that much. 

  


Dick used to be terrible at this. At the whole sitting around because you’re currently useless thing. He used to make everyone around him just as anxious as he was even in completely harmless situations. At some point, though, you learn that there’s situations where the best you can do is just wait calmly. Like this one. 

  


“Have you been reading any good books lately?”, Dick asks suddenly, pulling her away from her thoughts. 

  


“Hmm?” She needs a moment to fully process the question and recounts the few books she’s gotten around to in the last six months. “A couple. Nothing you would like, though.”   
  


“Tell me about them anyway.”

  


* * *

 

There’s a swoosh of wind and Wally standing next to them after ten more minutes.

  


“Hey, babe”, Dick smiles up at him. He has to tilt his head even further back and makes a pretty stupid face but Wally gives him an adoring smile, anyway. They’re grossly sweet. Sweetly gross? Gross and sweet? One of those. Maybe all.

  


Wally looks at Donna still seeming pretty distracted: “We’re through.”

  


“I can see that.”

  


Wally grins at her: “I’m glad you guys are okay.”

  


Dick holds out his left hand to him and lets himself be pulled up to press a kiss to Wally’s cheek. Donna gets up, too, as she spots the others coming down the tunnel. She hugs Kara quickly.

  


“Can you scan Dick’s shoulder real quick?”, she asks and Kara smiles in a way that makes it clear to Donna that she already knew about the injury.

  


Wally, however, sends Donna a very displeased, yet completely unsurprised, look. Donna shrugs at him and Wally doesn’t seem to be able to keep up the facade of actually being bothered. He’s capable of self-reflection and of judging how bad an injury is. And this one isn’t very bad.

  


Wally wouldn’t normally react badly to Dick being injured but there’s been stuff going on lately and all of them are still on edge. Especially because of the two hours they thought Dick was dead.

  


Wally drops down next to her and leans on her shoulder: “You two have a good time?”

  


Donna hums in response as they both watch Roy make fun of Wally for freaking out when the cave collapsed. She feels a smile forming when Wally crosses his arms and hides his face in her shoulder. 

 


End file.
